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Blue Button

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Major retail pharmacy chains and industry associations have pledged to adopt Blue Button technical standards to transmit prescription drug history data to customers, the White House announced earlier this month.

Veterans will now have better access to their personal health information thanks to a new, enhanced version of the Veterans Affairs Department's Blue Button downloadable electronic health record that now includes several new categories of information, according to a VA announcement.

During a webinar hosted by the National eHealth Collaborative, officials drew attention to a Jan. 6 draft Blue Button implementation guide outlining how providers can securely transmit patient data and do so in a semi-structured manner. The pell-mell quality of Blue Button-downloaded data has long been recognized as a downfall of the effort, which began in the Veterans Affairs Department as a means to permit patients to have an electronic receipt of care received.

Perhaps realizing that the private sector may not spontaneously improve Blue Button downloadable medical record design, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology within the Health and Human Services Department is mounting a $51,000 (total) challenge for people to stop making it "look and feel like a receipt."

Healthcare is moving to a patient-centered approached and health information technology must follow suit, said Roger Baker, Veterans Affairs Department chief information officer. The VA has focused for years on creating electronic health records that deliver great information to clinicians, said Baker. "But what we haven't done to this point is turn that into a patient-centered electronic health record," he added.

ONC announced June 5 a challenge with a $45,000 prize for the first place winner for an application that takes Blue Button data and brings it together with data such as health indicators for others in the same age and gender categories.

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